1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless transmission of video information, and in particular, to transmission of uncompressed high definition video information over wireless channels.
2. Description of the Related Technology
With the proliferation of high quality video, an increasing number of electronics devices (e.g., consumer electronics devices) utilize high-definition (HD) video, which has an overall data throughput requirement on the order of multiple giga bps. In most wireless communications, HD video is compressed first before transmitting to the wireless medium. Compression of the HD video is attractive because the overall required communication bandwidth and power can be significantly reduced, relative to transmission of the original, uncompressed video. However, with each compression and subsequent decompression of the video, some video information can be lost and the picture quality is degraded. Furthermore, compression and decompression of the video signal incurs significant hardware cost as well.
The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) specification defines an interface for uncompressed HD transmission between devices through HDMI cables (wired links). Three separate channels are used to transmit three pixel component streams (e.g., R, B, G). For each channel, pixels are transmitted in a pixel-by-pixel order for each video line and line-by-line for each video frame or field. The HDMI provides pixel-repetition functionality which repeats each pixel one or multiple times. Copies of each pixel directly follow the original pixel during the transmission at each pixel component channel.
It is also desirable to transmit uncompressed HD video over the area in certain scenario. However, existing wireless local area networks (WLANs) and similar technologies do not have the bandwidth needed to support uncompressed HD video. Further, existing wireless networks may suffer from undesirable interference originated from nearby and neighboring users, either of the same network or of other networks.